[lbo-talk] Rube Goldberg of a file format

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 7:10 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> http://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/trunk/XeePhotoshopLoader.m?spec=svn28&r=11
> // Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find
> // something in the attic of your eccentric old uncle who
> // died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th
> // birthday. That last detail may not be important for
> // the purposes of the simile, but at this point I am
> // spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the
> // people responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file
> // format.

Yesterday I was asked to design obfuscated Rube Goldberg code. So if
The Opposition (you know, "customers") wanted to clone the service,
they'd pay at least the full costs of a rewrite-from-scratch.

We weren't twirling our black moustaches. Rather, we bounced a ball
between us while gleefully brainstorming how to cause maximum
frustration.

I'm not saying Adobe did this, but transparency clearly wasn't Job #1.

(And I don't just blame "capitalism" either, but many non-capitalist
systems where people gain advantage from obfuscation.)

Tayssir